As a kid I didn't dream of becoming a therapist. Yet I am so grateful I have the opportunity to be one. I did dream that someday people living with mental illness would be understood, accepted, and valued. Which led me to seek out and create opportunities to make that dream reality. I hope that therapy and my websites are opportunities for you to feel understood, accepted and make a difference in your life and the lives of others. I realize that there is so much shame and judgment associated with Bipolar Disorder, so I share my very raw personal story with the hope that it gives a voice to an experience that has been silenced. My wish for you is for this website to give you a place to stand, be heard, share your story of living with Bipolar Disorder and learn from each other. May it be a place where stigmatization, shame, and judgment are not invited. I trust that together we can build a community of acceptance, hope, and awareness. Over a decade ago I had my first bipolar experience and it changed me. For the first time I was afraid of myself. I feared what I could become. It felt like the foundation of who I believed myself to be was destroyed. However, the journey of self-destruction created an opportunity. I got to choose who I wanted to become and built the courage to become it.I trust that I am living with Bipolar Disorder for three reasons: 1. My genetic vulnerability; 2. Environmental circumstances; 3. My response to both (short term and long term). I now understand that it's not what happens to me in life that matters, it's how I respond. However, I didn't get that when I was thirteen. I didn't have the proactive skills to respond to traumatic events in life. My family was unable to support me and show me how to cope. We lived by the unspoken rule, "You must always be strong". The idea of asking for help scared me. Therefore, when cancer and death hit my family at the same time, I abandoned my emotions by locking them up as though in a jar and ran away from my life. This I call "the trigger" of my genetic vulnerability. Bipolar Disorder entered my life, but I didn't know it until I was sixteen and that jar exploded during a full blown manic and depressive episode. Mania showed me the possibilities and unique abilities of my thinking, learning, spirituality, emotional experience, and losing control of it all. It was a very special and beautiful experience, whose story often goes untold. I felt at peace and invincible. I had visions that gave me a profound understanding of the universe (but didn't excite those I called at 3am). I got the meaning of life. I felt I was literally a part of God. I truly believed I was a prophet speaking the words of God. My intentions were to unify all people. I didn't need sleep. I stayed up all night studying Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Bible, Torah, Koran, Buddhism, and Quantum Physics. At the same time, I was wreckless with my relationships and life. I began with leading a walk-out in chemistry because I wasn't learning. I was a brand new driver in a mini-van doing 80 mph on surface streets. Without money, I tried to buy a new car. I seductively encouraged a salesman to want to give me the car for free. I didn't need sleep. My sexuality was beyond impulsive, I announced my desire to everyone I knew. So the people in my life (particularly my parents), kept me from acting on it. My thoughts worked in ways I had never experienced before. In the beginning they moved so fast that I couldn't speak them quick enough or even write them down. And I didn't have one thought at a time, I'd have three different perspectives taking place all at once. As the mania intensified, I went more days with no sleep. My thoughts would get jumbled up in knots. I'd get so frustrated that I'd cry and scream, but no one understood because my voice was incoherent. The only thing that helped me gain a sense of control and coherency of my thoughts was to doodle highly detailed intricate drawings that repeated the same kind of pattern. Mania was the scariest experience I've had in my life. During the peak of mania, which lasted almost a week, every emotion that I had held within me came exploding out at once. I was completely out of control in my own body and mind, and I knew it, but I couldn't do anything about it. Mania caused me to think my parents were trying to hurt me. I called the police on my mom. I thought they locked me in a room to control me, so I violently took a hammer to the door (it was never locked.) I verbally attacked my mom with rage and hatred. I sobbed and wailed uncontrollably with guilt and shame as I mourned for the first time my mom's cancer and grandma's death, which occurred at the same time three years prior. I blamed myself for both. I started a fist fight with a friend. I told another friend that he needed to get me pregnant right now because our child would be the messiah. I threatened to beat up a kid for splashing water. I had delusions of being raped. With this kind of terror, it’s easy to forget the beauty of mania. It's so easy to silence mania and to be so full of shame. I was never hospitalized. It wasn't an option because when I peaked I was on vacation. My mom journaled every action I took and every word I said. The police, who I called for help to protect me from her, considered putting me in jail to contain me. Instead, the Sheriff checked on me daily. My family brought me home to get me help. By the time help arrived, I had already crashed into a very deep depression. It felt like death. I couldn't think, feel, or move beyond a fetal position. I wanted to die. I believed death would be better than not feeling alive. However, I couldn't hold a thought in my mind long enough to do so. As I began to come out of my depression, I went back to high school struggling to hold my head up and stay awake. However, I was able to write beautiful poetry and announce to everyone that I was crazy. It took me months to start to almost feel safe in my own body and mind. I felt a huge sense of shame because I desired mania so deeply, yet I feared it more than death. When I felt I was in my "normal", a state where I was slightly manic (exuberant and full of energy), I thought I was safe. I stopped taking my medication and relapsed within less than a few months. I got help immediately before it could peak. I had the support of all of my family and friends who had been educated about the symptoms. This forced me to believe in my diagnosis, the label, and accept that I'd be on medication for life. It made that amazingly beautiful, incredibly terrorizing experience feel wrong, bad, and permanent. I felt worthless. When I finally started feeling better about myself (because I returned to my naturally exuberant state), three words from my psychiatrist's mouth changed my path, "You can't be". After those words came a list of everything that I wanted to be someday, that I could no longer be because they required stress. So I gave up on going to college, and fulfilling my dream of making a difference in the world. I got angry. I was able to feel for the first time since my depression. For some reason it was okay for me to place limitations on myself, but I refused to let anyone else place limitations on me. The day I got angry, I changed my focus from fearing that I wasn't in control, to taking it back, without asking for permission from an "expert". I chose to educate myself on how to integrate the limitations of Bipolar Disorder into my life, master my relationship with Bipolar Disorder and move beyond all stigma. However, I trusted no one, especially an "expert" because they've never lived my life and I felt so dehumanized based on their analyzation of me. Therefore, I began a long, lonely journey I called "Building My Own Damn River". I spent years on that journey. I read and lived the principles of every personal growth book, then began writing my own (you can see its beginning in "Our Space"). I soaked up information about Bipolar Disorder like a sponge. I immersed myself in exclusive research during my eight years of higher education. I never wanted to have a major episode again. I got good at preventing episodes by developing pro-active skills for responding to stress and conflict. Yet, I was always in a struggle for control. I felt the need to be in control, even after many years with the disorder. My deepest fear still was having another episode. It was so painful. I always felt alone and never felt safe being vulnerable with anyone. I repeated a lot of mistakes over and over again. I got sick and tired of doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So I decided that the pain from trusting and letting go of control probably wasn't worse. This is how I learned to ask for help, receive it and be vulnerable. During this realization, I received a gift. The gift was giving myself permission to be Bipolar. Part of the gift was giving myself permission to not be afraid anymore. I replaced that fear with the trust that I'll be okay because I trusted people would help me. Furthermore, I began to learn how to stay safe as I go with my Bipolar experience. I learned how to identify and inhibit what's fueling mania. Most importantly, I learned to ask for help from my family, friends, colleagues and psychiatrist without feeling like a failure. After over ten years, I still take my lithium every day. I've developed a relationship with Bipolar Disorder in which I give minor episodes permission to exist and know when to intervene. In finally learning how to go with the my life's journey, I haven't had a significant episode in over ten years. I've overcome my fear of "experts". As a result, I've become an innovative and collaborative expert of facilitating a process that I hope will enable you to influence how you experience Bipolar Disorder.
